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In the jungle: After deliberately surrendering to Martin Keamy and his mercenaries, Ben's being walked through the jungle to the helicopter. "What makes you so important?" Keamy asks Ben, wondering why the great and powerful Charles Widmore cares so much about this bug-eyed twerp. Gee, Marty, we've wondered that ourselves!

They get to the chopper, where Frank's still trying to get his handcuffs off, Jack and Sawyer having left him the toolbox but not bothered to free him before setting off to the Orchid to rescue Hugo. Kate arrives in the clearing and says she's being chased by the Others. The mercenaries fan out, the whispers are heard, and the Others, hiding in the surrounding jungle, begin ambushing the mercs one by one, until none are left but Keamy.

He and Sayid are in a fight to the death, until Keamy finally is brought down by shots fired by Richard Alpert. He's made a deal with Kate and Sayid: In return for their help in freeing Ben, they would get to leave the Island. Ben says the chopper is all theirs.

At the Orchid Station: Jack and Sawyer arrive to find Hurley waiting as Locke explores the garden outside the greenhouse. Locke's looking for a way into the Orchid and tells Jack he wants him to stay on the Island. Jack refuses; they're going home. Locke says they're not supposed to go home, that Jack is there for a reason, and he knows it.

"If you leave," Locke tells Jack, "that knowledge will eat you alive from the inside out, until you decide to come back. You're going to have to lie about everything that happened since we got to the Island; that's the only way to protect it. It's a place where miracles happen. Just wait til you see what I'm about to do."

Ben returns and asks Locke: "Did you tell him?" "I tried," Locke says. Ben dismissively tells Jack to get going and to get his people off the island and on the freighter within an hour. "Lie to them, Jack!" Locke calls as he and Ben disappear down the elevator into the Orchid's underground bunker.

Inside the Orchid's old subterranean laboratory, Ben opens a mysterious chamber and begins loading all sorts of metal furniture and objects into it. He tells Locke to busy himself watching the Orchid Station orientation videotape while he, Ben, attends to business. On the tape, Dr. Edgar Halliwax says that "the vault" is for special Dharma Initiative experiments with space and time ("Time traveling bunnies," Ben gibes), and that you must never, ever put metals into the chamber. Locke becomes concerned that Ben is doing exactly that, but Ben seems unworried. However, as the elevator suddenly ascends back up to ground level, Ben asks Locke to give back his Baton of Death.

Shortly afterward, the allegedly dead Martin Keamy comes down the elevator and walks into the Orchid, dripping blood and calling for Ben. Apparently he has really, really good body armor and was just playing possum after Richard shot him and left him for dead in the jungle. He shows off the heart-rate monitor strapped to his arm and boasts that it is a "dead man's trigger": If his heart stops beating, the 500 pounds of C4 hardwired into the freighter's systems will blow the ship to kingdom come.

Locke, who's been lurking, appears and introduces himself to Keamy. Apparently he has been taking negotiating lessons from Ben, because he tells Keamy that he has no conflict with him, neither do the folks on the boat, so let's just talk this out and maybe sing "Kumbaya" while we're at it. Boy, that kind of logic would persuade any homicidal lunatic, wouldn't it? Keamy has just enough time to sneer at him before Ben jumps him and stabs him in revenge for Alex's murder. Locke shrieks that if Keamy dies, Ben will have killed everyone on the boat. Ben says: "So?" Not my problem, dude!

A dying Keamy says that wherever Ben goes, Widmore will find him. "Not if I find him first," Ben says.

On the freighter: Desmond, Jin and Michael try to figure out how to keep the C4 from blowing them all up. Michael finds a tank of liquid nitrogen and says that if they can freeze the bomb's battery pack, it may delay ignition and give them enough time to escape, once the red light goes on and sets off the big bang. Michael does this himself, and he sends Desmond up on deck. But Jin insists on staying below to help until the last minute, when Michael persuades him to join Sun because she and their baby will need him.

On the Island and the freighter: Daniel brings the Zodiac raft back for the second group of survivors. He wants Charlotte to go too, telling her that it's her last chance to leave. Charlotte at first agrees, but then Miles (who wants to stay) says privately to her that it's strange she would want to leave the Island after trying to get back to it for so long. "What do you mean, get back?" Charlotte asks, all faux innocence. "What do I mean?" Miles echoes obliquely, and walks off.

Charlotte then changes her mind and says she'd rather stay on the Island "for now." Daniel doesn't understand why -- pointing out that "for now" could mean "forever" -- and Charlotte tells him only that she's still looking for the place she was born. (This validates the suspicions of those who noticed how Charlotte seemed to recognize the Dharma logo when she found the polar-bear skeleton in Tunisia, and also that she seemed awfully happy when she parachuted in and splashed down on the Island.)

Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and Sayid get back to the clearing and free Frank from his handcuffs, and he flies them back toward the freighter. However, they're unexpectedly losing fuel due to just-noticed bullet holes in the tank, and they have to dump out anything that's not bolted down. It's still not enough to lighten the chopper if they are to make it to the boat, though -- and right now, none of them can even spot the boat.

So Sawyer whispers something to Kate, they kiss in a passionate goodbye-forever kind of way, he tells her "Just do it, Freckles," and he nobly jumps into the ocean and begins swimming back to the Island. Awwww, James! Hugo finally spots the freighter, and Frank puts the chopper down on deck in the nick of time.

Desmond's trying to wave them off, shouting that the boat's about to blow and everyone needs to get off. Frank's trying to patch the holes and fill the chopper's gas tank in the space of a couple of minutes. Sun and Kate are trying to go below to fetch Jin, but Jack won't let them, and he forces them aboard the chopper with Baby Aaron, Hurley, Sayid and Desmond. Sun sees Jin running toward them after Frank lifts off, but time has run out, and it's too late to go back.

Meanwhile, down below, Michael is alone. He hears the whispers. He looks around and sees Christian Shephard, who kindly tells him: "You can go now, Michael."

"Who are you?" Michael asks.

And the freighter blows up.

Sun is shrieking hysterically, struggling as the others hold her down and shouting for them to go back. But Jack tells her it is too late, that Jin is gone. There is nothing to see down there but flaming debris floating upon the ocean. Sun is inconsolable.

At the Orchid: Ben makes some pathetic excuses for killing Keamy and letting the freighter explode. He closes the mystery vault, tells Locke to duck, turns the chamber on and creates an series of popping explosions inside, kind of like a big microwave with a metal dish in it.

Ben dons a fur-lined Dharma parka that once belonged to Edgar Halliwax. Hmmm, where have we seen that parka before? Oh yeah: "The Shape of Things to Come"! He's going somewhere cold, he tells Locke, and Locke cannot go with him. Why? Because Jacob wants Ben to suffer the consequences. If Ben moves the Island, he tells Locke, he can never return. He will be an exile. But Locke will be the Others' new leader! Richard and the rest are waiting for him a couple of miles away, and they will follow him faithfully. And indeed, when Locke goes to find them, Richard smiles and tells him: "Welcome home, John."

Meanwhile, Ben removes the smoking metal from the vault and climbs through the back of it and into a tunnel. Then he goes down a ladder and breaks through a sheet of ice. He falls into an icy, well-like stone chamber, ripping his right sleeve and cutting his arm. In the stone wall there is horizontally set a huge, gear-like wheel, like a vintage ship's capstan, frozen over with ice. Ben mutters that he hopes Jacob is happy now; he breaks off some ice and begins to push with all his might, straining to turn the wheel to the left.

Juliet is sitting on the beach, drinking booze and looking pensively out to sea as a shirtless Sawyer staggers out of the ocean and sits down by her, remarking what a nice day it is for a swim. He notices the rum she's been swigging and asks what she's celebrating. "I'm not celebrating," she says. He turns to see a plume of smoke rising from the horizon. "Is that our boat?" he asks. "It was," Juliet says.

As Ben finally manages to force the frozen wheel nearly to a 180-degree turn, a strange keening noise causes everyone on and near the Island to look up. Daniel and his passengers look up from the Zodiac raft; Locke, Richard and the Others look up from the jungle; Juliet and Sawyer look up from the beach. And up in the sky, Frank and his chopper passengers look around, too.

All of them cover their eyes as the sky first turns a pale purple and then a blinding white. When they can see again, the people in the helicopter can't believe what's there.

Which is... nothing. The Island has simply vanished, leaving only concentric rings of water to mark its passage. None of them can believe it could have disappeared like that in an instant, nor can Jack believe it when Hugo later tells them Locke was planning to move the Island. But it's the only explanation they have.

Frank has another problem: They are out of gasoline, and they now have nowhere to land. He has to ditch the chopper as Sayid tosses out a large octagonal, inflatable raft. All of them manage to bob to the surface and get aboard the raft except Desmond, who has to be dragged aboard. He is unconscious and has a cut on his head, but Jack revives Des with CPR, Des barfs up some seawater, and they are all relieved.

"It's OK, we're all alive," Jack tells them. They stare dumbly, thinking the obvious: "Oh sure, and what about everyone else?"

That night, they are spotted by an approaching ship called the Searcher. Jack looks troubled as the ship nears, and he tells the others that they must lie about everything that has happened since the crash, or their lives will all be in danger -- presumably from Charles Widmore and the other mysterious, ruthless powers behind the faked wreckage of Oceanic 815. To save the others left behind, he says -- now consciously echoing Locke -- they must all agree to lie.

As they pull alongside to be rescued, Desmond looks up and sees... yes! It's his Penelope, hurrying down to the deck. He scrambles aboard and calls to her, and they approach each other in stunned disbelief before joyously embracing and kissing.

"Are you OK?" she asks. "How did you find me?" he asks.

"Your phone call! I have a tracking station," Penny says. Desmond tells her he loves her and will never leave her again. Ah, but such constant love is grand!

The others come aboard the Searcher, and Desmond shyly but proudly introduces Penny to all of them. Jack says hi to her, then abruptly tells Penny that they "need to talk." Geez, Doc. Can't the Lostaways, like, have a bath first? A meal, maybe?

A week later, they are 3,000 miles away, off the uninhabited island of Membata. The six Oceanic 815 survivors say farewell to Penny, Desmond and Frank. "I'll see you in another life, brother," Jack tells Des, just as Des first told him years ago, when they first met in L.A.

The six leave the Searcher and climb aboard a different raft, using boards as paddles on the long row to a larger, inhabited island, Sumba. They are greeted there by the natives and begin their new lives as the Oceanic Six, telling the lies they believe they must tell, if they and their friends are to go on living.

For the finale's flash-forward sequences, read Friday's TV blog post!